Psychomania (1973) AKA The Death Wheelers

Gotta love the folks at the British Film Institute for restoring this little beauty. At one time Psychomania would have been dismissed as a piece of British half-arsed 70s trash exploitation, emulating better films from the USA and fair enough it probably is, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a charming relic of British film history or a whole lot of fun either.

The Living Dead’s Jane (Ann Michelle) causing mayhem in the supermarket, look at those biscuits go

Riding the wave of US biker flicks that peaked with Easy Rider in 1969, (still putting bums on seats in British cinemas even in the late 1970s when I finally got to see it) and sensationalist tabloid headlines about out of control motorcycle gangs the producers of Psychomania decided it would be a winning idea at the box office to combine a biker flick with that great standby of the 1970s, the Horror Movie.

So Nicky Henson is Tom the leader of motorcycle tearaways the Living Dead, who terrorise the local town. Fortunately Tom’s mum (Beryl Reid) is not only the local lady of the manor (with the most appalling taste in psychedelic interior design), she’s also a devil worshiper who imparts to Tom the secret of eternal life. Basically you just have to believe that you will come back as you kill yourself, so soon Tom’s away over the bridge into the river. True to his word as soon as the gang bury him at the local stone circle, sitting upright on his bike, Tom comes roaring out of his grave.

Tom (Nicky Henson) in it up to his neck

Buoyed up by Tom’s remarkable come back the whole gang top themselves (some in quite hilariously funny ways) come back and proceed to run riot. Only Tom’s girlfriend Abby who botches her suicide attempt stands in the way of the gang’s mission to commit mayhem.

In common with most early 70s films dealing with British youth culture, Psychomania just gets it spectacularly wrong with the gang’s ‘hip’ clothes and music not to mention the received pronunciation dialogue – ‘We call them the Fuzz mother!’, which of course is all part of the movie’s charm. By today’s standards these undead bikers are really reborn to mild and much of their ‘wild’ behavior seems quite tame in an understated English sort of way. Despite that the motorcycle stunt work is excellent (director Don Sharp’s had been second unit director in charge of the action sequences on Alistair MacLean thriller Puppet on a Chain) and as you would expect film veterans Beryl Reid and George Sanders as Shadwell her creepy butler sidekick steal every scene they appear in. Robert Hardy hams it up too as the local police inspector who is out to get the gang.

Dig those threads, George Sanders as Shadwell outclasses everybody.

A whole bunch of fun and worth the price of admission just for Tom’s spectacular comeback I give Psychomania a 555/666

Trivia: this was the last movie George Sanders made in a long career playing suave and often villainous Englishmen including Jack Favell in Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), Addison DeWitt in All About Eve (1950), Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert in Ivanhoe (1952), Mr Freeze in TV’s Batman (1966) and the voice of Shere Khan is Disney’s The Jungle Book (1967). He also played Simon Templar in a series of films featuring ‘The Saint’ in the 1940s and 1950s. Sffering from dementia he overdosed on barbiturates in a hotel room in Barcelona on 25 april 1972 leaving a suicide note that said

‘Dear World,

I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck’

Ann Michelle who played Jane Pettibone is the sister of Allo Allo‘s Vicki Michelle and appeared with her in Tigon’s saucy The Virgin Witch (1972)